Camera IconAs robots increasingly take over boring and repetitive tasks, more challenging and interesting jobs are being created for humans. Credit: Getty Images/Blend Images

Workers have nothing to fear from the pace of technological change, because new technologies are creating just as many jobs as they are destroying, a new report claims.

However, WA’s labour force is facing serious shortages in skills that robots don’t possess — such as customer service, and the ability to care for others.

A new report from Deloitte Access Economics, The Path to Prosperity: Why the Future of Work is Human, says workers’ fears about the rise of insecure work are misplaced.

It says the “gig economy” isn’t taking over — casual jobs are a smaller share of all jobs than two decades ago, and that share hasn’t budged in more than a decade.

Australians are staying in their jobs longer, with 45 per cent of employed workers having been with their current employer for five years or more — the comparable figure in 1988 was 40 per cent of employed workers.

And concerns about mass-casualisation and contracting arrangements are, at least for now, “mostly hype and hypothesis”.

“The rate of self-employment has actually declined steadily since the 1970s — and in fact is currently at a record low,” the report says.

“Similarly, while 24 per cent of Australians are employed on a casual basis, this share has actually fallen over the last two years, and broadly has been consistence over the last two decades.”

Chris Richardson, a former treasury official and director of Deloitte Access Economics, says a consensus is forming among economists that new technologies are actually creating as many jobs as they replace.

He said the media often focused on job losses stemming from automation, but it was only half the story. As robots increasingly take over boring and repetitive tasks, more challenging and interesting jobs are being created for humans.

However, as the nature of work changes quickly a severe skills shortage has emerged.

“At the start of this decade, the typical Australia workers lacked 1.2 of the critical skills needed by employers seeking to fill a given position,” Mr Richardson said.

“But now the average worker is already missing almost two of the 18 critical skills that are advertised for a typical job.”

Michael McNulty, Deloitte managing partner in WA,saidtherehad been a significant change in the type of work undertaken in WA over the past 20 years, in the form of a shift from manual to more cognitive work, and also from routine to non-routine roles.

“Some 180,000 new jobs have been created over the past decade, with more than half of these in health care and social assistance and mining,” he said.

“Education, public administration and accommodation and food services have also contributed strongly to growth, but skill sets are not necessarily keeping pace with this workforce transition.”

The report says more than 80 per cent of the jobs created between now and 2030 will be for “knowledge workers” and two-thirds of jobs will be strongly reliant on “soft skills” such as digital literacy, customer service, and health care.